This Little Piggy

"This Little Piggy"
"This Little Piggy"
Song
Language	English
Written	England
Published	1760
Songwriter(s)	Traditional

"This Little Piggy" or "This little pig" is an English language nursery rhyme and fingerplay. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19297.

Lyrics

The most common modern version is:

This little piggy went to market.

This little piggy stayed at home.

This little piggy had roast beef,

This little piggy had none.

And this little piggy went "Wee! Wee! Wee!" all the way home.^[2]

Finger play

The rhyme is usually counted out on a person's toes, each line corresponding to a different toe, starting with the big toe. A foot tickle is usually added during the "Wee...all the way home" section of the last line. The rhyme can also be seen as a counting rhyme, although the number of each toe (from 1 for the big toe to 5 for the little toe) is never stated.

Origins

The first line of this rhyme was quoted in a medley "The Nurse's Song", written about 1728, a full version was not recorded until it was published in The Famous Tommy Thumb's Little Story-Book, published in London about 1760.^[3] It then appeared with slight variations in many late eighteenth and early nineteenth century collections. Until the mid-twentieth century the lines referred to "little pigs".^[3]

References to this nursery rhyme

In a 2010 Geico commercial, actor Mike McGlone asks "could switching to Geico really save you 15 percent or more on car insurance? Did the Little Piggy cry 'wee wee wee' all the way home?" The commercial features a pig carrying two pinwheels sticking his head out the window screaming "wee wee wee!" during his ride home. When he gets home, he thanks the driver for the ride.

The game was used repeatedly in Warner Bros. cartoons, such as A Tale of Two Kitties (1942) and A Hare Grows In Manhattan (1947), typically when the "bad guy" in the film is hanging onto a line high above ground, and the protagonist peels off the antagonist's fingers one by one to the inevitable conclusion: "What do you know... Wan outta piddies!" This recurring gag is referenced in the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), where Tweety Bird essentially re-enacts his "piggies" scene from A Tale of Two Kitties, this time with Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) as the victim.

In the direct-to-video Drawn Together movie, after the Drawn Together gang gets away from I.S.R.A.E.L. the character Spanky Ham (voiced by Adam Carolla) says "Oh god oh god I was so scared. I mean I wanted to go Wee Wee Wee all the way home."

In Seinfeld season 5 episode 21 "The Fire" Elaine wonders: "Sure, the pinky toe is cute! But, I mean, what is it? It's useless! It does nothing. It's got that little nail that is just impossible to cut. What do we need it for?" and Jerry explains: "Because Elaine, that's the one that goes 'wee-wee-wee all the way home'."

Both title and plot of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novel Five Little Pigs (1942) refer to this nursery rhyme.

The novel Good Omens (1990) by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman depicts an adaptation of the rhyme, sung to the supposed Antichrist by his demonic nursemaid.

In a comic strip by Jules Feiffer, Ronald Reagan recites the rhyme as a sort of allegory to aspects of modern life: the little piggy who went to market is pictured as a Wall Street tycoon; the piggy who stayed home is a common, poverty stricken or homeless man; the piggy who ate roast beef is a big, muscular army general, the piggy who had none is a little, African-American child, and the piggy who cried "wee-wee-wee" all the way home is a rural couple reminiscent of Grant Wood's American Gothic. It turns out he was addressing the public on TV and two viewers are impressed: "He's the Great Communicator! One More Time!!" little piggy cried wee wee wee all the way home (wiggle fifth toe and a little foot tickle).

In the sitcom Friends, Chandler says he misses the tip of his toe, and tells Monica, "sorry doesn't bring back the piggy who cried all the way home!"

Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002) noticed that five digits for tetrapods was not a dogma.

Andy Gullahorn has a song "Roast Beef" on the 2007 release "Reinventing the Wheel" regarding the loss of a toe.

In the podcast Tell Em Steve-Dave Bryan Johnson exclaimed "Not Roast Beef!" at the possibility of losing a toe.

In The Rutles' song "Piggy in the Middle," the following is chanted throughout the ending sequence:

"This little piggy went to market

And this little piggy stayed home

This little piggy had roast beef

And this little piggy had none (Poor piggy)

This little piggy went "woo"

All the way home

In the iCarly TV Special iSaved Your Life, Spencer notices that Freddie's toes stick out of his leg cast, which motivates him to play the game on Freddie. He alters the lyrics a bit, saying "This little piggy went to market, and this little piggy got hit by a truck." (The alteration was a reference to the fact that Freddie was hit by a car earlier that day.) Spencer also used Freddie's toes in the wrong order.

In Season 4 Episode 3 of Lost, The Economist, James "Sawyer" Ford suggests a method to get Benjamin Linus to reveal information: "Well here's an idea: why don't we take a gun, point it to his big toe and send that little piggy to market? And if he still doesn't want to tell us, we move on to the roast beef. Why don't we do that?"

Notes

^ Wentworth, Work and Play with Numbers, p. 14.
^ D. Herman, The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 9.
^ ^a ^b I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 349-50.

Bibliography

Wentworth, George; Smith, David Eugene. Work and Play with Numbers. Boston: Ginn & Company (1912).

[1] Wentworth, Work and Play with Numbers, p. 14.

[2] D. Herman, The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 9.

[Opie1997-3] I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 349-50.

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